Prepare payroll — in minutes, not hours.
Hours, overtime, surcharges and absences flow automatically into a reviewable payroll run. You approve it, PlanState creates an export-ready file — and your accountant runs the payroll.
- Payroll export
- Surcharges automatic
- Servers in Germany
- 1 click
- from payroll run to export
- Surcharges
- calculated automatically & fully configurable
- Export
- ready to hand to your accountant
In short: one payroll run, reviewed and exported.
- Standard hours, overtime (25% / 50%), surcharges and absences flow automatically into one payroll run per month.
- Your own surcharge rules for Sundays, public holidays and nights — with a percentage and a tax-free flag.
- Draft → Reviewed → Approved, with a pre-check that warns about missing data instead of exporting blindly.
- A payroll booking file (CSV) — with your advisor number, client number and your own wage types.
- Hours come from the schedule and time tracking, master data from the employee file — no double entry.
Without PlanState: payroll prep eats up time every month.
This is what month-end looks like without payroll prep: several days where the payroll gets in the way.
Gathering the hours
Notes, spreadsheets and messages become one list — by hand.
Recalculating surcharges
Sunday, public holiday, night: who worked when gets sorted out in your head.
Query from the accountant
"Mr Bauer's hourly rate is missing." The payroll waits.
Correction the following month
The mistake only shows up on the payslip — and gets settled next month.
Without PlanState
Several days of extra work
Between month-end and a finished payroll sit queries, corrections and a nagging feeling.
- Hours transferred by hand
- Surcharges sorted in your head
- Corrections the following month
What does payroll prep mean — and what does the accountant do?
Payroll prep means bringing together all the payroll-relevant data for a month cleanly — standard hours and overtime, surcharges for Sundays, public holidays and nights, sickness and holiday — per employee, traceable and reviewed. That is exactly what PlanState does automatically from the schedule and time tracking.
From this data a payroll run takes shape: PlanState calculates gross pay and surcharges, separates tax-free and taxable portions, and lets you review and approve the run. The payroll export then creates a booking file that your accountant or payroll office imports directly.
The actual payroll itself — net pay, social security, tax filing — stays with your accountant. PlanState takes the tedious groundwork off their hands: no re-typed timesheets, no spreadsheet, no queries. Payroll data captured once, exported with a click.
Payroll run · current month
5 employees to runPrepare the payroll now
Hours, overtime and surcharges come from the schedule and time tracking. One click creates the payroll run.
In three steps to the payroll export
No re-typing, no in-between tool, no back-and-forth queries.
Times & surcharges flow in
Times & surcharges flow in
Hours, overtime and breaks come from the schedule and time tracking; sickness and holiday from the absences. Your surcharge rules apply automatically.
Linked with
Review & approve the payroll run
Review & approve the payroll run
Gross, hours and surcharges are shown per employee. The pre-check flags missing data before you recalculate or approve.
Status
Every step is logged
Payroll export to your accountant
Payroll export to your accountant
One click creates the payroll booking file as a CSV — with your wage types, advisor number and client number. Automatically each month if you like.
Result
Complete data set · ready to import
Review, approve, hand over
Two points decide whether month-end runs smoothly: the approval with the pre-check and the handover to your accountant.
Review & approve the payroll run
Three phases instead of a blind export. Before approval the pre-check runs and flags what's still missing.
Draft calculated · pre-check runs before review
Handover to your payroll office
Your accountant gets exactly the file their system expects — instead of a spreadsheet full of queries.
What gets handed over
- Hours, overtime, surcharges
- Sickness and holiday as a wage type
- Staff number and cost centre
Preview
No export created yet
Payroll run approved · ready to transfer
Everything the payroll run needs
On the left, what comes together. On the right, what it turns into automatically.
Hours & overtime
Standard hours and overtime at 25% and 50% — straight from time tracking, including breaks.
Surcharge rules (Sun/holiday/night)
Sunday, public holiday, night — each with a percentage, a tax-free flag and its own public-holiday handling.
Absences
Sickness and holiday come from absence management and appear as their own wage types in the export.
Pay & tax master data
Tax class, social-security number, health insurer, staff number and cost centre live in the employee file.
Gross calculation
Base pay, overtime amount and surcharges make up the gross pay — tax-free and taxable kept separate.
Review & approval workflow
Draft → Reviewed → Approved, with a pre-check before every recalculation and every export.
Payroll export
A payroll booking file as CSV to a standard import specification — with fully configurable wage types.
Export history & auto-export
Every export with its period, status and record count — automatically on a fixed day each month if you like.
Why the spreadsheet payroll list becomes a risk in 2026
Tax-free surcharges must be provable in a dispute — hour by hour, day by day. A spreadsheet can't do that: it shows totals, not where they came from, and no one can see who changed it and when. A payroll run that takes shape from recorded times and passes through clearly defined approval stages delivers exactly that traceability — and saves your accountant the queries that otherwise cost both of you a lot of time at the start of every month.
Pay & surcharges for every industry
Six industries, six pay themes. Pick yours.
Care
Theme: night and Sunday surchargesRotating shifts mean new night/Sunday/holiday surcharges every month. Calculating them by hand costs hours — and, in an audit, the evidence.
- Night, Sunday and public-holiday surcharges shown per day
- Tax-free portions kept separate from the taxable gross
Hospitality
Theme: weekends and casual staffFriday to Sunday is where the revenue — and most of the surcharges — comes from. Add changing casual staff on an hourly rate rather than a salary.
- Hourly rate and monthly salary in the same run
- Sunday surcharges automatic, no recalculating
Hotels
Theme: cost centres per departmentReception, housekeeping and kitchen run as their own cost centres. The export has to separate them cleanly, or the reporting is off.
- Cost centre and staff number come from the employee file
- Night surcharges at reception captured automatically
Fashion & retail
Theme: part-time and small contractsMany small contracts with different weekly hours. The target-versus-actual comparison decides whether the limit was kept.
- Contractual weekly hours held per person
- Overtime visible before it becomes a problem
Beauty & wellness
Theme: commission and hourly paySmall teams, clear hours, plus Saturday work. The payroll run shows in one view what goes to the accountant.
- Hourly rate straight from the employee file
- Payroll run reviewed and approved in a few minutes
Construction & trades
Theme: hourly pay and crewsBilled by the hour, often across several sites. What's missing only shows up at the accountant — or not at all.
- Hours per site via time tracking
- Pre-check flags missing hourly rates before export
What our customers say
Seven questions for any payroll software
Ask them of every provider, us included. On the right is how PlanState answers.
Seven out of seven — check it yourself in 14 days.
Try it freeIncluded in the Pro
Payroll export, surcharges and staff costs are part of Pro. Anyone on Core today can switch any time — with no setup fee.
Run your business by the numbers
All prices net · no setup fee · cancel monthly
Example calculation
Only active employees are billed. Payroll export and surcharges are included from Pro. All prices net.
PlanState vs. spreadsheets & payroll-office portal
Spreadsheets & notes
Same as always
PlanState
Everything in one platform
What you want to know
Common questions about payroll prep and the payroll export, and our answers.
PlanState handles the payroll prep: hours, overtime, surcharges and absences flow into a reviewable payroll run, gross pay is calculated and handed over as a payroll export. The final payroll — net pay, social security, tax — is done by your accountant or payroll office.
A payroll booking file as a CSV (semicolon-separated, date DD.MM.YYYY) with an advisor number, client number and configurable wage types — ready to import directly at your accountant.
Yes. You set up surcharge rules — for example Sunday, public holiday, night — with a percentage and a tax-free flag; they apply automatically in every payroll run and are shown per day.
Yes. Every run goes through Draft → Reviewed → Approved, and a pre-check warns about missing data before you recalculate or export.
Straight from the schedule and time tracking — including overtime and breaks. Absences such as sickness and holiday flow in too. No double entry.
Yes, a monthly auto-export can be enabled with a fixed export day; every export lands in the export history with its period and record count.
Payroll prep, schedule, time tracking, absences and the employee file run in one platform — the time and master data are the shared basis for the payroll.